


Day 6: Soulmates; Love on a Timer

by AlexaNDYE



Series: Pepperony Week 2018 (8/5 - 8/11) [6]
Category: Iron Man (Movies)
Genre: F/M, Soulmates
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-11
Updated: 2018-08-11
Packaged: 2019-06-25 18:03:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,288
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15646062
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AlexaNDYE/pseuds/AlexaNDYE
Summary: Pepperony Week 2018Day 6: Soulmates‘When you turn 18, there will be a countdown on your wrist written in black ink. The countdown consists of a number of years, days, hours, and minutes. This countdown represents how much time it will take until you meet your soulmate.’





	Day 6: Soulmates; Love on a Timer

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading!

‘When you turn 18, there will be a countdown on your wrist written in black ink. The countdown consists of a number of years, days, hours, and minutes. This countdown represents how much time it will take until you meet your soulmate.’

On her 17th Birthday, Pepper Potts was thrilled and overjoyed to be one step closer to knowing when she was going to meet her soulmate. As the year passed, she witnessed the birth of her friends’ countdowns appearing on their wrists. The time ranged from years to days with the maximum amongst their group being four years; very rarely did it ever start with hours or minutes.

She decided she didn’t want people to see her countdown appear. She wanted to be alone and enjoy the moment while she calculated the exact date. A few minutes before midnight, the night she was going to turn 18 years old, she prepared herself by taking out a piece of paper, a calculator, a calendar, and her camera. She wanted to document the whole thing.

As the seconds winded down, she kept the camera fixed on her wrist and hovered around the button. She was so very anxious and excited. She wondered how her soulmate would look, what he would be into, and where she might possibly meet him.

When the clock struck midnight, she snapped a photo of her wrist. She looked at the picture and frowned. “No… that can’t be right…” She looked at her wrist sideways and every other which way. She rubbed her wrist and hit it a few times.

On her wrist read: 018 Y 304 D 13 H 01 M.

“E-Eighteen years!?” she shrieked. “All of my friends got low numbers. Why is mine so high?” She sighed to herself and propped herself up with her hand against her cheek. “Am I that unattainable?”

She ignored her friends’ text messages and spent the entire night searching for a way to alter the countdown. All of the research articles she found explained that the countdown was merciless and there was no such way to alter its numbers.

However, some claimed that there was a way to opt out of the countdown and become free from the whole ‘countdown till soulmate’ notion. While Pepper thought about it, she eventually decided against it. Her excitement and giddiness about meeting her soulmate dissipated. She was no longer looking forward to the moment. She decided to hide the countdown with a piece of white tape and a silver metallic band.

Years passed and she watched her friends get married to their soulmates one by one, and each time, she got more and more depressed about the subject. It was common to ask about someone’s countdown, but whenever she was asked, she said she wasn’t interested in that nonsense.

Her first job was at AIM, Advanced Idea Mechanics, and it allowed her to get her foot in the door. She worked in their Finance Department and crunched numbers on a daily basis. A few years later, she was offered a job at Stark Industries where she was also in the Finance Department. She didn’t crunch as much numbers as she did at AIM, but she had a lot more responsibilities in terms of projecting the budget for various projects.

It was during her third year working for Stark Industries, she was asked to finish a budget report and put it on her manager’s desk. As she was turning in her work, she noticed next quarter’s finance report. All it took was a glance for her curiosity to kick in. She silently skimmed the paper and noticed that one of the numbers was wrong, causing more than half of the report to be incorrect and by a very large amount.

When she brought it up with her manager the next day, she was told to mind her own business. When she tried to bring it up to her manager’s manager, she was threatened by both of them that she’d be fired if she continued her antics.

She eventually got fed up with her bosses; she had to discreetly ask around to find out who was in charge of the quarterly reports. Her heart skipped a beat when she was told that Tony Stark, the CEO of Stark Industries, was the one that calculated them.

She knew who Tony was and what he did, so to say she was nervous to bring up the miscalculations to him was an understatement. It was either lose her job, or let the company lose millions of dollars. She sighed to herself and decided to bite the bullet.

During lunch, when hardly anyone was around, she rode the elevator up to the top floor where all of the directorates’ offices were, and searched for Tony’s. When she rounded one of the corners, she saw a small desk outside of two large double doors. She assumed the person behind the small desk was Tony’s secretary.

She walked up to the secretary and waited for her to get off her cellphone, but after a few minutes, Pepper’s impatience was wearing thin. She looked over at the clock that flashed ’12:56 PM’, meaning people were starting to come back from lunch. The last thing she wanted to do was make a scene in front of her colleagues.

“Excuse me,” she said hastily.

The woman was blonde and looked very young. Although she never paid attention to any of the rumors that went around the office about Tony Stark, she crossed the one about his secretaries off her mental list.

“Yes?” the woman asked as she, not so subtly, looked at Pepper up and down.

“I’m looking for Mr. Stark,” Pepper replied. “Is he in right now?”

“He is, but he’s not taking any more appointments today.”

“I don’t have an appointment.”

She raised an eyebrow at her, clearly judging her attire and choice of words. “Then he won’t be seeing you.”

“Can I make an appointment?”

“No.”

Pepper sighed. “Well, tell him it’s very important. It’s about the quarterly report for next week.”

“Okay, I will let him know.”

Pepper waited for her to write it down, but she never did. The secretary simply went back to her phone. Pepper sighed and leaned across the desk. “Listen, if you won’t tell him, then I will. And I will only be a few minutes. It’ll be much less work for you to do if you just let me talk to him.”

The secretary glared up at her. “Miss…”

“Potts.”

“I don’t care. Leave now, or I will call security.”

The security guards around the corner overheard the secretary and walked over. They stood on each of Pepper’s sides and looked between the two women. “Something wrong here?”

“Mr. Stark is a very busy man and this woman refuses to leave,” the secretary calmly replied. Pepper absolutely hated how pretentious she sounded.

“I will only take a few minutes. Please, this is urgent.”

The security guards sighed and reached for Pepper’s arm. She retracted her arm and sternly ordered, “Do not touch me”. After a minute of arguing with the guards, she got too impatient and made her way towards the large double doors. As she walked, the guards continued to threaten to throw her out, and soon, she retaliated with threats of her own.

She pulled open the double doors and firmly walked through them, all while threatening to spray the guards with pepper spray.

Tony was at his desk and on the phone with someone when Pepper burst through the doors. He raised an eyebrow at the scene before hanging up his phone.

“I swear!” Pepper replied. “I will do it!”

“Whoa, hey,” Tony said as he got up from his office chair. “No need to make threats.”

One of the security guards huffed, “You want me to throw her out, Mr. Stark?”

Pepper turned to Tony and shoved a few papers in his face. “These reports are wrong, Mr. Stark. A miscalculation towards the beginning of the first three projects is throwing off all of the projections.”

“Okay, that’s it—” the security guard reached for her arm, but she yanked it away.

Tony raised an eyebrow as he flipped through the papers.

“If you go through with these numbers, you’ll be losing millions, maybe even billions, of dollars,” she explained with haste. The security guard firmly grabbed her arm and pulled her towards the exit. She tried to get free, but his grip was too hard.

Tony held up his hand and both guards stopped. “Let Miss—”

“Potts.”

“Let Miss Potts go, please. And give us a moment alone,” he ordered the guards.

The guards looked at each other, nodded, and then left. As the doors to Tony’s office closed, he gestured for Pepper to have a seat. As she sat down, he threw the papers on his desk with a light smack.

“You are aware that I’m the one that calculated this, right?” Tony asked as he shoved his hands in his pockets.

She nodded. “I am.”

“And you realize you just threatened my security, right?”

“Yes.” She swallowed hard.

“Let’s be very clear here then.” He leaned over his desk; hard brown eyes stared deeply into soft, yet firm, blue ones. “I have every right to fire you and have you arrested by the police, and it would be very, very, hard for you to find another job with a restraining order slapped on your wrist.”

She stared up at him and gathered the courage to stand tall with her accusations.

Tony sighed and turned the papers around so it faced her. “These numbers are wrong.” Pepper’s eyes lit up. “I was probably up late and a few numbers slipped, so yes, you are correct. Had this gone through with the Board of Directors, Stark Industries would’ve lost millions of dollars. So, thank you for bringing this up to me.”

Pepper let out a sigh of relief. “Thank you for taking the time to listen to me, Mr. Stark.”

“You’re fired.”

Her eyes widened and she pushed back the chair as she shot up in protest. “What!?” She couldn’t believe the nerve of him. She just saved his company millions and now he’s firing her? She was beside herself.

“Ditch the desk job and work for me,” he said sternly, almost as if it were an order.

She furrowed her eyebrows. “But I do work for you… technically.”

“I mean, work under me as my Personal Assistant. Full benefits, a company car, the works.”

“Why me?” she asked.

He smirked. “I need someone like you—well, actually, I need a new Personal Assistant, and you seem like a woman that could get the job done no matter what the circumstances.”

She stumbled over her words, “Well… I mean… uh—”

“Perfect! Welcome aboard, Miss Pepper Potts.” he beamed at her. “Be in at 8 tomorrow morning. My secretary will give you my schedule for the next couple months, assuming she actually wrote it down somewhere.”

She frowned at his nickname for her.

Pepper walked to her car later that night, wondering what in the world just happened. One minute she was a regular worker, the next minute she was threatening security, and the next she was Tony Stark’s Personal Assistant. 

She sighed to herself and wondered what her co-workers were going to think when they hear she’s now Mr. Stark’s Personal Assistant. She always heard rumors about why his Personal Assistants always quit, and the last thing she wanted to be was the next rumor floating around the office. She was a hard worker, maybe even a workaholic, but she never wanted people to assume she got a position because of her relations with someone.

“He’s not even that handsome…” she said to herself as she thought about Tony.

The first week as his Personal Assistant was moderately easy; she reminded him of his meetings, fended off multiple rumors, fended off his advances towards her, and took notes for him.

The second week, he bought her flowers for doing such a good job (or so he said), but she refused to accept them and continued on with the week.

The third week, he asked her out on a date, but Pepper thought he was merely asking as a friend and told him that she was busy. Towards the end of the week, she thought it was odd that while the rumors stated that he was a playboy, she hadn’t seen any of his conquests.

The sixth week, he bought her new shoes and commented that her old ones were out of style. He refused her refusal to accept them, and she was forced to keep them.

The eighth week, he didn’t come into work. She called him five times before she finally got through, but it wasn’t Tony on the other side, it was someone named JARVIS. JARVIS gave her an address and asked her to wake him up. She found him asleep, incredibly hungover, and very incoherent.

She saw his first conquest during her third month, and by the fifth month, she got used to them.

She began to comprehend how his Personal Assistants might’ve quit, aside from rumored relations with him.

During her seventh month working for him, she found out that he often donated to children’s hospitals around the world, and bought various toys for orphanages. When she tried to ask him about it, he was too drunk to give her a straight answer. She wondered if he remembered her asking him at all.

It was after her second year that she decided enough was enough; she was determined to show Tony that she wanted him to be serious about his company. When she marched to his office, he wasn’t there. When he called his personal bodyguard, Happy Hogan, he explained to her that he was currently ‘drunk off his ass’ at a strip club.

By the time she got there, Tony was already being dragged out of the place by Happy.

Pepper got out of her car. “Is he okay?” she asked as she bent sideways to see if Tony was still alive. Tony slurred his words a bit as his head bobbed and swayed.

Happy sighed. “I’m getting real sick of this, Pepper.”

“I know,” she replied, also sighing. “I know.” Happy looked like he was about to pass out from exhaustion, and she wondered how long he was watching Tony. “Why don’t you go home and get some rest? I’ll take him home.”

Happy raised an eyebrow. “You sure?”

Pepper nodded. “I just toss him through the door, right?” she asked with a smile.

Happy laughed, “Yeah. Something like that.”

She took Tony home and had to drag him out by the arm. He was out like a light. She thanked the heavens that he didn’t puke in her car on the way over.

When she finally dragged him down the hallway of his mansion and into his bedroom, she thought about just leaving him on the floor. She heard his soft snoring and, out of the goodness in her heart, she pushed him onto his bed and retrieved the trashcan in his bathroom.

She stared at her boss that was strewn over the bed in his awfully smelly clothes that reeked of booze and women. She sighed to herself and began to strip off his shirt, pants, and shoes. When she reached for the watch on his wrist, she paused.

Was it right for her to look at his countdown timer? If she did, was she being intrusive? Even if she did, he would never know since he will probably be too drunk to remember anything.

She held her breath and carefully removed his watch. When she pulled it off, she briefly saw the black ink on his skin. She quickly turned her head the other way and placed his watch on the nightstand. When she glanced over at Tony’s peaceful form, she smiled and wondered when his soulmate would come along and stop him from being so reckless with his life.

Her eyes directed unconsciously to his wrist and when she read the countdown, her face fell. She was confused and worried at the same time.

The countdown on his arm read: 000 Y 000 D 00 H 00 M

“Wha—how?” she muttered to herself. “His… countdown—but why would he be…” she wondered if his soulmate wasn’t right for him, or if something happened. The countdown was at zero, but he insisted on booze and women.

She bit the top of her thumb and tried to think. Maybe she died in a horrific accident? She shook her head. She would’ve at least heard about his soulmate from the press or the people at work.

She went home that night with a permanent puzzled look. When she looked at her own wrist that night, all she was staring at was a white piece of tape. Her dissatisfaction with her countdown made her uninterested in the concept. She couldn’t even remember what her timer was at, or if it had already passed, and she didn’t care.

The next day, she walked into Tony’s office and expected to see it empty, but Tony was there; he was leaning against his desk and peering out his floor-to-ceiling glass window. He was watching a few engineers put together a rocket for a current project.

She inhaled and exhaled in attempts to regain her composure, and steeled herself for what she was about to do. “Mr. Stark,” she said.

He turned his head slightly. “Miss Potts.”

“I need to talk to you about something.”

He turned around fully this time and faced her. “What about?” he asked solemnly. He looked exhausted.

“It’s about your after-work activities.”

“Okay,” he replied, curiously.

She gathered as much courage as she could. “I don’t like how reckless you’re being.”

“Reckless?” he began to chuckle.

“Yes, reckless. You’ve been drinking every single day and partying every single night. I ask you to sign some documents, but I have to remind you fifteen times before you actually do it. You keep Happy up at night with your antics and you never let him catch a break. You go to Board meetings unprepared even though I try to brief you a week in advance. You hardly come into work anymore, and when you do, you’re hungover.” She paused and angrily watched him continue to treat her like a joke. “And now you’re laughing because I obviously entertain you with my seriousness about your work, and your company.”

His low chuckle faded. “Have you met your soulmate, Pepper?”

She was taken aback by his question. “What—What does that have to do with this?”

“Because I have.” She didn’t respond. He walked towards her and with each step, she grew even more apprehensive of his demeanor. “I met her.”

“Well… good for you.”

He forced himself to smile. “But she wanted nothing to do with me.”

“How terrible of her,” she replied sarcastically. “Life isn’t always unicorns and rainbows, Mr. Stark.”

He leaned in closer to her. “Some people look forward to their soulmate their entire lives, Miss Potts. I’m guessing you’re different – you’re not like the other girls.” She could tell he was mocking her.

She glared at him. “My personal life is none of your business.”

“No, of course not.” He straightened his back. “You rarely date, you’re always meticulous about your professional life – what could possibly make you want something so bad that you’ll wait every single second of your life for?”

She was breathing through her teeth now. It took every ounce of courage for her to hold back her anger. “I am my own person. You and I are not the same, and we’ll never be the same. You can say whatever you want about me, but at least I know who I am. You act tough, but you’re just another man whose life didn’t go the way they expected to, so don’t blame others who have no control over that.”

His expression was unchanged.

“Have a good day, Mr. Stark.” 

When she finally got past the threshold of his office, she had to run to the restroom to let out her bottled up emotions. She inhaled and exhaled multiple times before shedding a few tears.

Later that night, she was fixated on the white piece of tape that stretched across her wrist. She looked at it solemnly and remembered herself as a kid, angry and disappointed in the world for what number it gave her.

When she picked at the tape, wondering if it was right of her to disregard the whole ‘soulmates countdown’ thing. She thought about her friends that married their soulmates, and then she thought about her future. If everyone was destined to meet their soulmate, she wondered, what would hers do when their countdown struck zero and she didn’t show up?

She pulled back the tape and was unfazed by the line of zero’s.

000 Y 000 D 00 H 00 M

She pulled out her phone and scrolled in her pictures folder until she found the one she took of her wrist at midnight on her 18th birthday.

018 Y 304 D 13 H 01 M

She furrowed her eyebrows at the time and began to do the math on her phone. By her calculations, she realized that her countdown timer struck zero a little over two years ago. When she delved further into the date, she realized that it pinpointed to a little after 1 PM on a Thursday. She pulled up the calendar on her phone and saw that she was still working at Stark Industries.

She tried to think back to where she was two years ago on Thursday at 1 PM.

Her eyes widened when she looked at the following week. All of Tony’s meetings were there, which meant that she had just started working for him as his Personal Assistant.

Like a lightbulb going off, her eyes widened when she realized when and where she was, and what exactly she was doing at that time.

The next day, she visited Tony’s office with a handful of papers in a manila folder. He was hunched over his desk, looking at one of the blueprints for his latest rocket design.

She cleared her throat, making him look up to notice her presence.

“Miss Potts,” he simply said.

“Can I talk to you for a few minutes?”

“Do you want me to sign those?” he asked, glancing at the folder in her arms.

“Uh, no, this is actually about something else.”

He stared at her. “Then no, I don’t have a few minutes.” He immediately got back to his blueprints.

She sighed and dropped a picture on his desk. He curiously glanced at the picture and saw that it was a countdown timer. He assumed it was hers.

“When I was little, this was all that I looked forward to, but when I saw the number, I got disinterested in the notion that you were supposed to meet your soulmate when the number got to zero. My friends got low, single digit numbers while I got… this.” She smirked. “I hated it. I didn’t like what it told me. I didn’t want a number to define who I was, so I forced myself to forget about it.”

“Why are you telling me this?” he asked lowly and unhappily.

“Because I didn’t know how much I could hurt someone.” She tried to smile. “You were waiting your whole life, while I didn’t care at all. I’m sorry I’m two years late.”

He smiled briefly at the picture. “Don’t blame yourself. Being someone’s soulmate is a two way road. If you don’t like the concept, then you don’t have to worry about it. I don’t want to force it on you.”

She chuckled. “Please. I started having feelings for you a long time ago.”

He looked at her in curiosity. “What do you mean by that?”

“There was one week when I didn’t come in, because I was sick,” she began. “You came to my doorstep and brought me chicken noodle soup. When I told you I hated chicken noodle soup, you went out and bought me clam chowder.”

He smiled at the remembrance. “And then you said you hated clam chowder, so I bought you chocolate covered strawberries. And it turns out, you’re deathly allergic to strawberries.”

She beamed at him. “Not many people would do that for me.”

“Considering you got sick from helping Happy drag my drunk ass home during a storm, I had to.” He paused and furrowed his eyebrows at her. “Really? That’s when you started to like me?”

“You’re an incorrigible, stubborn, egotistical, and narcissistic, Mr. Stark,” she replied. “But you’re also a good man.”

He raised an eyebrow at her.

“I’m the one who approves your charity contributions through Stark Industries.”

“Ah,” he replied with a smile. He got up from his seat and sauntered over to her. While he was genuinely happy and excited to finally be able to spend time with his destined soulmate, he was also concerned that his lack of dating experience would turn her away. He wanted to be careful around her and make sure she knows he’s serious about their relationship. “Do you have any plans for tonight, Miss Potts?”

She nodded. “I do, in fact,” she beamed at him. “I’m going on a date with my soulmate.”

“Really? Is he good looking?”

Her smile fell and she looked at him flatly. “Don’t push it, Stark.”

He laughed and leaned against his desk. “How’s about dinner at 6 PM? Italian sound good?”

“Italian sounds great.”


End file.
